Best Commodore 64 games

djsim

hey guys, I want to make a list of the best C64 games of all time. I may have missed a few gems along the way that you may have played. Do you remember a game called Creatures. Oh what a game. I played it last nite and still it plays as well today as it did back in the old days.







Have any of ye fond memories of this game?????

SIM

Retr0gamer

Used to love that game as well but playing it now it has aged very badly. The guys who made that also made Mayhem in Monsterland which for me is the pinnacle of C64 gaming and still a great game. Never played Creatures 2 but heard it was a much better game than the first one.

Turrican 1 and 2 were really good on the C64 but thats more so that there wasn't much competition in that genre. There were some great shmups like Uridium. Also Bubble Bobble was a brilliant arcade perfect conversion which is better than many of the 16-bit and 32-bit versions. Even Mame doesn't play it perfectly.

r3nu4l

Well here's a few but there are tonnes more:

Last Ninja 2
Platoon
The Great Escape
Ghosts N' Goblins
Turrican I & II
Speedball 2

Ruu_Old

I didn't play a whole lot of C64 but there was this fantastic pool game (even by todays standards). Must go searching for it as my tape broke .

DaBreno

Bubble bobble, the best game there was on that beloved system with Lemmings a close second.
Other great platformers : The New Zealand Story and Rainbow Islands.

I played Elite to death along with Armalyte, Nemesis Turrican, Dragon, Ninja and Robocop(with its strangely sad Intro music and high-score entries.)

Buggy Boy - the best c64 racer.

Honourable mentions to The Last ninja series for its sheer graphical power and to Snare for its Mighty opening theme music. (Can anyone remember what its Ending was? Still in the media today!)

I can see myself editing this list 50 more times as more pops into my head....

Skellington

Has to be Robocop 2, Blues Brothers or Flimbos Quest.
Although they are also the only games I can remember playing, I know I sat for hours on end with them.

Hygro

Does anyone recall Vendetta?? I remember thinking it was the business back in the day. Renegade was a masterpiece!!

Also, Bionic Commando was a great game ... jaysus if you bring in the soccer games then you couldn't really go wrong with Gazza 2

Zaph

Slightly OT, but I was looking for something in my parents' garage recently and I came across, still in its original box, my kid sister's old C64 in pristine condition with all the bits, including a light gun thingy that never worked that well, and a load of games. I was amazed as I thought it had been thrown out years ago. Are they worth anything these days?

Andrew76

As mentioned above the Last Ninja and Turrican series were brilliant. Hawkeye got played a bit too - platform/shooter kind of game. Manic Miner, Monty Mole, Buggy Boy, Mission Impossible were great too.
For footy it has to be Microprose Soccer - best footy game there was imo until SWOS came along on the Amiga. I'm sure most of us played one or more of Track 'n Field/Daley Thompson's Decathlon/Winter Games, poor old Quickshot joystick took a battering in the 100m in T 'n F. Anyone remember Combat School - now there was a tough game!

hamster

zaph wrote:

Slightly OT, but I was looking for something in my parents' garage recently and I came across, still in its original box, my kid sister's old C64 in pristine condition with all the bits, including a light gun thingy that never worked that well, and a load of games. I was amazed as I thought it had been thrown out years ago. Are they worth anything these days?

Not worth that much yet, maybe in years to come. 30 million were sold after all. I would add it's worth more to hold than sell it. I have a non working vic20, c64 and a working a500 but admit to wanting to getting them running again. The Amiga I have works but is missing it's tv modulator (though I can get it thru the rgb plugs).


Games I bought on the C64 (or least a selection of them):

1986:
Astro Chase
Pitstop II
FF: Forest of Doom.
Cauldron
Cauldron II

The Eidolon
Zzap Sizzlers (Drop Zone, Thing on a Spring, Bounder, Wizard's Lair)
(Z, Monty on the run, Who Dares Win)

Batalyx
Scarabaeus
Equinox
Zoids

1987:
Xmas:
Maniac Mansion
Nebulus
Buggy Boy
SEUCK
Parallax
The Sentinel

1988
Summer:
Bubble Bobble
Spy vs Spy trilogy

Xmas:
Driller
Armalyte
Hawkeye
Zak Macraken and the Alien Mind Benders

1989:

Summer:
Rocket Ranger
Darkside
Total Eclipse
Bombuzal

Xmas:
Turbo Outrun
The untouchables
Storm Across Europe (SSI)

1990:
Summer:
Space Rogue (Origin) - My last purchased game....

Hardware:
Action Reply MKIV

As for unpurchased waaay too many to list - eg. IO, Zork, Tetris.... Good times

Saruman

Anyone ever play streetfighter? It took about 40 mins to load and then liked to crash on you... oh that was horrible.

Creatures 1 and 2 were the best. The demo of Mayhem in monsterland looked amazing though. I never got to buy it. http://www.lemon64.com/reviews/view.php?id=202

Flimbos Quest was another good one.

There was an excellent 2 player game where one person controled a tank or something and another the helicopter. It was a scolling shooter. Cant even remember if it was C64 or on the 286

Myrddin

Anyone remember midnight resistance on the c64? Autotest? Robocop 2 was a classic. Teminator 2? Last ninja..... snare...salamander...so many more to remember (if only i could see up to the attic ha)

dazberry

hamster wrote:

Action Reply MKIV

I had one of those bad boys - and it was by far the best piece of hardware I ever bought ... and not just for copying games, but also for saving your own games to disk and being able to load them back in a few seconds

D.

monkeyfudge

Saruman wrote:

There was an excellent 2 player game where one person controled a tank or something and another the helicopter. It was a scolling shooter. Cant even remember if it was C64 or on the 286

That was Silkworm and it was a jeep and a helicopter.... Kind of sucked being the jeep though. There was also a sort of sequel called SWIV.

I had that pack with the light gun that's already been mentioned... I think it was called The Light Fantastic Pack. But the light gun really didn't work all that well and no other games were ever released for it other than the ones bundled with the computer.

It also came with Batman the Caped Crusader, which was based on the comics and not the movie... It was pretty cool, but I could never complete the Joker level... some of the puzzles were a tad obscure. The Batman the Movie game was great too, although it was better on the Amiga... as was the Untouchables game.

I was always huge fan of the Dizzy games back then and I bought pretty much all of them.

MYTH was probably my favourite C64 game of all time though... it was converted to the Amiga some years later, but they changed the main character and made it a lot easier.

hamster

monkeyfudge wrote:

I was always huge fan of the Dizzy games back then and I bought pretty much all of them.

Interesting, I totally missed out on the Dizzy series. What one was your favourite, and what one start it all? So many good remakes now on so many platforms.

Oh yes, Fort Apocalypse was another good helicopter shooter made by Synapse. Excellent game and it made very early on too... 1984-1985.

Firewalkwithme

Slicks was the game I played most on my C64. It might not be among the very best games mainly because of a lack of depth but if you have ever played Micro Machines then you should check it out. I think the same guys made both games and when you play Slicks it shows.

I played this just to try to beat my own laptimes but I can't get near some of them now!

Try to win the Championship in the Benetton for a challenge, I don't think it's possible in the Ferrari!

Review and Screenshots

hamster

dazberry wrote:

I had one of those bad boys - and it was by far the best piece of hardware I ever bought ... and not just for copying games, but also for saving your own games to disk and being able to load them back in a few seconds

D.

Yup sure was, 3 games per disk side with that warp 25 second loader. Amazing really since the normal loading time on the 1541 was a dog. I remember packing most of my games on a single c90 minute tape (bad idea) with the novaload... but was fun at the time. Hey there's an idea... must try that with winvice...

oops... missed mentioning World, Winter and Cal. Games. World games was the best. I missed out on Summer games. T'was great when you had a gang over

monkeyfudge

hamster wrote:

Interesting, I totally missed out on the Dizzy series. What one was your favourite, and what one start it all? So many good remakes now on so many platforms.

Treasure Island Dizzy was always my favourite... That may just be because it was the first one I played, but it just seems to have a far tighter gameplay than the others.

You only have one life and no energy bar though, so it was pretty tough.

World Games was my favourite of the 'Games' series... I loved the weight lifting and a the cliff jumping.

Hygro

Great Scott!! I'd completely forgot about MYTH, what an amazing game ...the only problem I had was that it always crashed after the 3rd or 4th level on me :mad:

Back to the Future part 2 was a great game also! Plus I wa the only one of my friends to have it!

monkeyfudge

I could never make it past the pyramid level in Myth... it required pixel perfect jumps to get by some of the traps.... It was a piece of piss on the Amiga though.

Myth had a great intro screen where a hot chick would say "Welcome to Myth" in some top quality voice synth.

Pigman II

Arkanoid 2: Revenge of Doh
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=146

Batman: The Caped Crusader
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=228

Ghostbusters
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=1048

International Karate
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=1315

Last Ninja 2
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=1489

Microprose Soccer
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=1671

p.o.d.
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=1871

Rock'N Wrestle
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=2166

s.w.a.t.
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=2202

Uridium
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=2766

World Games
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=2894

monkeyfudge

Pigman II wrote:

Arkanoid 2: Revenge of Doh
http://www.lemon64.com/games/details.php?ID=146

After years of Homer Simpson the title of this game seems somewhat less menacing.

hamster

Going slightly OT - but following up on a promise from my last post.

I couldn't resist trying something I haven't done for exactly 17 years. Went on a mad tangent tonight:

1. Plugged in the Action Replay v6 cartridge into the C64 (ahem winvice).
2. Soft booted the c64.
3. Loaded Zoids from floppy disk.
4. When the game loaded, I hit the freeze button on the Action Replay (alt+z)

5. I attached a new tape.
6. Choose backup (F1). Backup compressed memory state and gave me the option to save to whatever - I choose tape (eg D - tape save - turbo)... on the safe side.

7. Gave a new file name - Zoids and hit play and record on tape.

8. The file started saving until tape counter reached 33. Did it work?
9. Rebooted and loaded the tape. Found Zoids by tape counter 6.
10. Novaload kicks in and by 77... Zoids is loaded. (tap file was 300k blank and now 481k). Zipped = 53k
11. To do superturbo save only take 33 on the tape counter.
12. Could try adding more games at the end of this game until we have a packed tape with over a 100 games...Why do this? Because it sounds mad!
13. Optionally, Could then finally write the whole lot to a real tape.

At least it works... read somewhere there was some incompatibility with superturbo.

monkeyfudge

ha... I haven't seen that Action Replay screen in a long time.

mmmm.... POKES....

sham69

Last Ninja
Last Ninja 2
Delta
Renegade
IK+
Impossible Mission
Ghosts n Goblins
Ghouls N Ghosts
Skool Daze
Sanxion
Crazy Comets.

I could go on and on.
I still play most of these on my psp via an Emulator.

Raskolnikov

Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge for me, was the best racer ever released on the C64. Had months and months of fun on that one.

Wishbone Ash

Saruman wrote:

There was an excellent 2 player game where one person controled a tank or something and another the helicopter. It was a scolling shooter. Cant even remember if it was C64 or on the 286

Was that called Combat Lynx? (It's the only game I recall playing on the C64).

Dr Bob

hamster wrote:

13. Optionally, Could then finally write the whole lot to a real tape.

At least it works... read somewhere there was some incompatibility with superturbo.

sounds great , but how would you get it on tape , tap2wav and soundcard to tape deck?
Also , any of you actually have "real" C64s(i.e. non emulated)?
I've a breadbin styled one myself.

Trode

A few of my favourites:

Paradroid
Tense, thoughtful and utterly absorbing, this is an amazing little game, and one that's rarely been copied and never bettered. And because it was quite minimalist to start with, it's aged wonderfully.


Wizball
Another one that holds up well due to it's uniqueness, the surrealist colour-mixing shoot-em-up has several excellent ideas beyond the superficial, like the R-type style drone being controllable by a second player, or being able to choose which power-ups you could keep permanently as a reward for finishing a level.


Spindizzy
I must have spent days exploring this, and never even got close to seeing it all.Was it even possible to get to the isolated crescent part of the map?

Also, Turrican, Rainbow Islands, New Zealand Story, Dizzy, Armalyte and Sanxion, as others said.

Max_Damage

Their was many, but I had three in particular:

STUNT EXPERTS:


OVERLANDER:


LOTUS TURBO CHALLENGE:

LoGiE

Well all the games mentioned above are classics but I'll add a few more Some are obviously arcade conversations but are mentioned simpley because it was pretty amazing how they got the preformance out of the c64.

Monty on the Run
Bankok Knights
Commando (Great Music)
Barbarian (Decapatations ffs!)
Gryzor
Wizball
Chuckie Egg
720

Some screenshots

Barbarian


Chuckie Egg


Commando


Monty on the run


Wizball

hamster

luas_dublin wrote:

sounds great , but how would you get it on tape , tap2wav and soundcard to tape deck?
Also , any of you actually have "real" C64s(i.e. non emulated)?
I've a breadbin styled one myself.

I mentioned above - yep I have a c64, vic20 and amiga. Only the A500 is definitely working. I don't have a powersupply for the commie and I would be surprised if its working - the pcb inside looks.. well corroded.

I reckon it could be done with a line from the speaker slot to in the input socket with a tape deck. Would have a to be perfect though. I remember from the tape to tape copying way back that the tone had to be perfect.
I had the sliders like this:
"
......"
............"

Wizball - I forgot about that! Excellent game that I finished. The mad bonus round would last forever. I had that with the Fabulous Seven - games that were on that were: The Great Escape (quite good) and Short Circuit (ok) and the horrible Stallone Cobra game ugh.

Owen

I have a C64, a Vic 20, an Apple IIe, an original Apple Mac with the monochrome 9" screen and original mouse all up in the attic. The C64 was my baby though, I was in the demoscene, and had the action replay card. I only had the 1541MK1 disc drive though, and it would constantly overheat, and need reinitialisation, and resetting to make it work. I had a dot matrix printer, a 300 baud modem that went in the cart port, and an action replay too. The AR Cart was just incredible for the time.

I miss the C64

Hygro

Dare I bring it up (ooh matron) ... Sex Games!!!

http://www.c64gg.com/Images/S/Sex_Games_ingame1.gif

Another controversial one of the time ... The Great Giana Sisters, though obviously for completely different reasons!!!

http://www.rumbke.de/data/art/move/gianasisters.png

Max_Damage

Hygro wrote:

Dare I bring it up (ooh matron) ... Sex Games!!!

http://www.c64gg.com/Images/S/Sex_Games_ingame1.gif

LOL

Dr Bob

hamster wrote:

I reckon it could be done with a line from the speaker slot to in the input socket with a tape deck. Would have a to be perfect though. I remember from the tape to tape copying way back that the tone had to be perfect.
I had the sliders like this:
".

I've converted a lot of c64 tape images(.tap files) and .prg files that I nabbed off the net to wav files , burned them to a cd as audio files (nero lets you do it) and then played the cd on my hifi and recorded them to a c90 .Its a litle hit and miss , but it works fine(I tried recording straight from the pc to the tape deck , but it didnt work as well).
I've actually played the wav files straight to a c64 tape deck by way of one of those "cd to tape" adaptors people use in car stereos' .Its a bit less reliable , but it works well enough (you cant really pause it though , so you need to be quick on the space bar when the commie finds the filename at the start of the load).Anyway that part wasnt too hard , but it never occured to me to "make" turboload tapes the way you mentioned there.

I've a c64 (breadbin) and I picked up an A500 as well recently .Have no workbench disks for it though , and no easy way of getting programs for it from the net...

LoGiE

Hygro wrote:

Dare I bring it up (ooh matron) ... Sex Games!!!

http://www.c64gg.com/Images/S/Sex_Games_ingame1.gif

Good lord... I really should ban you for posting porn or maybe slap you on the wrist for posting that crap in a 'Best C64 games' thread.

I'm praying it didn't require Daly Thompson like Joystick wiggling to get your charactor to do anything....

TinCool

My most fondest gaming memories are that of the C64. The best home computer of it's time. I got mine a few years after our VIC20, around late 1984. Most of my favs are from the early years of the C64.

Here's a list of some of the games I used to play.

• Impossible Mission (still fire this up on the emulator to make sure I can still clock the thing).
• Bruce Lee
• Forbidden Forest and Beyond the Forbidden Forest
• Spy Hunter
• Thrust (the best budget game ever made if you ask me, published by Firebird).
• Spy Hunter
• Zaxxon (first game I ever purchased. Was like 15 punts at the time, which was a lot of cash in those days).
• Ghostbusters
• Raid Over Moscow
• The original Leaderboard
• PSI Warrior
• Beach Head I and Beach Head II
• Hunchback I (first game I ever played on C64)
• Aztec Challenge
• Commando
• Ghost n'Goblins
• Cauldron I and II
• Spy Vs Spy I and II (never did get to play the III one)
• Summer Games II (and to a lesser extent I)
• Pitstop II
• Pitfall
• All those crappy Mastertronic budget games (Chiller anyone ?)
• Uridium
• Rambo First Blood Part II
• Green Beret (bloody impossible game)
• Chuckie Egg II
• Herberts Dummy Run
• Jet Set Willy
• The 4 Arthur Pendragon Games (Staff Of Karnath, Entombed, Blackwyche and Dragon Skulle).

The list goes on and on

TC

Hygro

If anyone wants to jog their memories ....

http://www.vgmuseum.com/c64.htm

daedalus2097

Yeah, Spy Vs Spy - all of them were class...
Spy Hunter with the cool music (Peter Gun)
Whirlinurd
Chuckie Egg
Snare was devilishly hard, but very addictive... Swapped my Atari 800XL with a friend's C64 just to spend solid days at it...

Mr E

Tincool: Impossible Mission is being released at the end of the month on the DS. Its a perfect port of the C64 version. It also has an updated version with multiple playable characters. Brilliant.

As for games, I'm a thalamus junkie. They barely put a foot wrong when they were around. Quedex, Sanxion, Delta, Armalyte, Hawkeye, Retrograde, Creatures 1+2, Hunters Moon, Snare, Summer Camp, Winter Camp....

snickers

maybe some of u will remember the aeroplane game 1942 that was cool and ikari warriors had great playability does anyone remember rastan on c64 was it actually possible to get by the fire ropes i never ever ever could get past the second one ever

r3nu4l

Yep, 1942 was very good and once you got good enough you knew exactly what part of the screen enemy planes would be coming from...thank God for auto-fire buttons

I liked Ikari Warriors too, my brother loved it!

sham69

does anybody know how to convert some.prg to .d64 or .t64 ( i think thats right). I have a load of .prg files , every c64 games ever made and I need to be able to play them on the psp but all the good emulators only seem to take tape or disk image files. I am currently re-playing last ninja one, have to say its still a damn impressive game all thing considered.
Cheers.

Dr Bob

sham69 wrote:

does anybody know how to convert some.prg to .d64 or .t64 ( i think thats right). I have a load of .prg files , every c64 games ever made and I need to be able to play them on the psp but all the good emulators only seem to take tape or disk image files. I am currently re-playing last ninja one, have to say its still a damn impressive game all thing considered.
Cheers.

its probably easier just redownloading them as t64 files from somewhere like *Snip*. Failing that you could install winvice on a PC - load up the prg file to that , and use hamsters method(on page 2 of this very thread) to save it as a speedloader file to a new .t64 file

No links to roms/images please! Although the site you mentioned is pretty easy to find

Dr Bob

aha , forgot about the roms thing -doh!- sorry.
LoGiE's right though It is kind of an obvious site ...

sham69

Cheers Luas....
I have most of the games I need on d.64 etc its just that i got something
from the torrents and when I opened the folder it was full of .prg's
Thanks for the reply.

TinCool

sham69 wrote:

Cheers Luas....
I have most of the games I need on d.64 etc its just that i got something
from the torrents and when I opened the folder it was full of .prg's
Thanks for the reply.

Try googling "arnold c64 ftp" and you'll find any C64 game ever made on their website.

TC.

djsim

I am glad I started this thread, I see a lot of people had very fond memories of the C64 like I did. Some games on that list I had totally forgotten about, happy days!

sham69

Cheers for that.
I am going through a retro phase at the moment.
Was playing sabouteur, delta, hawkeye and IK+ in bed last night.
Great fun.........

hamster

djsim wrote:

I am glad I started this thread, I see a lot of people had very fond memories of the C64 like I did. Some games on that list I had totally forgotten about, happy days!

I'm going through a constant phase at the moment... current re-mapping Starquake via the Gimp and Infranview. Almost game which I must complete. Wizard's lair was it's twin and that was harder which I have great memories of completing.